The first US military execution since 1961 can now occur, following President Bush's approval Monday of carrying out the death sentence of Ronald Gay, who was convicted by a court-martial of murder and rape in 1988.

Scores of Somalis have moved into Postville, Iowa, where a cultural shift is under way. On May 12 federal agents arrested 389 mostly Hispanic workers during an immigration raid at a kosher meatpacking plant. The town of 2,200 people is home to 24 nationalities, including the three Somalis above.

Americans pared back their driving mileage 3.7 percent in a year-to-year comparison between May 2007 and May 2008, as soaring fuel costs spurred the third-largest such dropoff in 66 years, the Department of Transportation reported Monday.

Shipping traffic on the Mississippi River was virtually back to normal Tuesday for the first time since a July 23 barge and tanker collision caused a 419,000-gallon fuel-oil spill.

About 1.5 million businesses owe the government $58 billion in employee paycheck withholding never forwarded to the Internal Revenue Service,

congressional investigators said Monday. The IRS emphasized, however, that it collects 99.8 percent of all Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance taxes.

In a first in the study of dinosaur behavior, paleontologists using a specially equipped helicopter are snapping photos of fossilized footprints left on Utah's Moccasin Mountain track site by at least six dinosaur species about 180 million years ago.

Americans strongly favor making English the official language of the US, according to a Zogby International poll released Tuesday that indicates nearly 80 percent favor such a bill.